Friday, July 20, 2018

What is meant by that part of the text, "The Spirit of God moved over the water"? It seems to me to mean this, that some life-giving force was present in the waters: it wasn't simply water that was stationary and immobile, but moving and possessed of some vital power. I mean, what doesn't move is quite useless, whereas what moves is capable of many things. So, to teach us that this water, great and cumbersome as it was, had some vital power, he says, "The Spirit of God moved over the water." It is not without reason that Sacred Scripture makes this early comment. Instead, it intends later to describe to us that creatures were produced in these waters by the command of the Creator of all things, and so at this point it teaches the listener that water was not idly formed, but was moving, and shifting, and flowing over everything.

Monday, July 16, 2018

This image illustrates a gravitational lensing effect due to the distortion of space by mass. This is one prediction where Einstein's theory of relativity gave the right answer where Newton's did not. But even with this, it's impossible to 'prove' Einstein right. (NASA, ESA, and Johan Richard (Caltech, USA); Acknowledgements: Davide de Martin & James Long (ESA/Hubble))

You've heard of our greatest scientific theories: the theory of evolution, the Big Bang theory, the theory of gravity. You've also heard of the concept of a proof, and the claims that certain pieces of evidence prove the validities of these theories. Fossils, genetic inheritance, and DNA prove the theory of evolution. The Hubble expansion of the Universe, the evolution of stars, galaxies, and heavy elements, and the existence of the cosmic microwave background prove the Big Bang theory. And falling objects, GPS clocks, planetary motion, and the deflection of starlight prove the theory of gravity.

Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Byzantine humanism ended with the collapse of Byzantium, and the debate about nature ceased to be a priority for Orthodox scholars. Some who had fled to Italy eventually returned to their homeland, where they made a living by teaching; while others, who had already acquired a sound Orthodox theological education and despised the Westerners, would engage in translations, mostly of astronomical works, in parallel to their theological polemics. Yet the sixteenth century in the Ottoman territories failed to produce important works on science—and certainly none that could be perceived as contradictory to faith. Most of the scientific texts that were produced by Greeks were written in Latin, and thus their work was assigned more to the European Renaissance than to the Orthodox world. In the West, Greek scholars contributed a great deal to European humanism by teaching Greek, editing ancient Greek texts, and helping Western scholars discover new gems in Byzantine manuscripts, a number of which, having survived the destruction of Eastern libraries, were carried to libraries in Western European cities.